The week before Halloween, Gov. Deval Patrick is giving out transportation projects like candy: New Red and Orange line cars to calm those anxious commuters in Greater Boston who despair of seeing an end to the horror show that is commuting on the MBTA; electronic tolling that will prod drivers who haven’t gotten a transponder to get with the program; and straighter roads at the Allston tolls on the Mass Turnpike.
But the South Coast Rail, the one apple Patrick would dearly love to give out, has worms in it. With little to say about concrete progress on South Coast Rail financing, Patrick touted the economic goals of the project at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast Tuesday.
Opening up Boston workers to the affordable housing mecca that is the South Coast is one of the aims of the rail line. “Imagine if you worked here in Boston and could get a fast train to New Bedford … within 45 minutes,” the governor told the Boston Globe. “It completely transforms the way we think about economic growth.”
Travel time estimates to the SouthCoast via Stoughton using electric trains are actually 77 minutes, according to the Army Corps of Engineers recently released study and MassDOT’s own fact sheets.
As John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things. And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Patrick’s desire to bring trains to the rail-deprived region is laudable. But his bold assertions about South Coast Rail remain problematic. In 2007, when the governor promised that trains would be running to New Bedford and Fall River by December 2016, he did not have a finance plan.
There will be no trains running between Boston and the SouthCoast in three years. There is still no finance plan. The details that were supposed to be released several years ago have yet to see the light of day. Nevertheless, state transportation officials plow gamely ahead with regional open houses touting the line’s virtues and the Corps of Engineers stamp of approval on the Stoughton route.
Despite $500 million in new revenues for transportation projects statewide, the state of facts and evidence have changed little for South Coast Rail. Massachusetts does not have the means to fully fund the project. If built, the MBTA does not have the financial capacity to operate the line.
With the sequester in play, there are fewer federal dollars available for transit than ever before. Even if House Republicans were to conjure up a miraculous, new appreciation and dollars for mass transit, the head of the Federal Transit Administration is on record with his reluctance to send federal dollars to transit agencies for new projects if those agencies have difficulties running their
existing systems.
South Coast Rail, a nearly $2 billion project, hinges on South Station’s expansion. That nearly $1 billion plan, which would also ease congestion on other commuter rail lines, is creeping along with its own issues just as slowly as the rail project.
The governor may be working on a calculation of getting South Coast Rail far enough along, so that his successor in the Corner Office would get tied up in knots reneging on the deal. If that person were inclined to do so, that is. But facts are stubborn things. Sprinkling a few treats around the commonwealth does not make rotten apples go away.
Gabrielle Gurley is senior associate editor of CommonWealth magazine, a MassINC publication.